Hi,
In recent weeks, we’ve seen an escalation of climate outrage to an extent rarely seen in the decades-long struggle of the modern environmental movement. From the youth-led school strikes, to the blockades of Extinction Rebellion, to ongoing acts of indigenous resistance, the current moment feels like an important turning point in history.
Our current moment is starting to resemble the 1960s and early 1970s, complete with a space race, an American presidency in crisis, and government after government resisting the demands of people simply claiming the right to survive.
Ours is a revolutionary moment, and I have the feeling that it’s only just beginning.
A poem posted this week by 17-year-old French climate activist Robin Jullian summed up my thoughts on the current mood better than I ever could: “It’s a rage, filled with love.”
This is what it looks like to reject dystopia.
In my first article for The Correspondent, I wrote about how climate change has moved on from wonky discussions of the science to something much, much deeper. Climate change isn’t about solar panels, it’s about how we treat each other.
Environmental activism had a strong start around the time of the first Earth Day in April 1970, when 20 million people (10 percent of the population!) took to the streets to clamour for radical change after oil spills, acid rain, and a river literally catching on fire. A series of legislation including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act became a model for environmental protection around the world. But it wasn’t enough.
Car-culture, suburban living, and the quest for eternal economic growth was also exported from the United States around the same time and formed the basis for the climate emergency we find ourselves in today. In the decades since the 1990s, our leaders have mostly ignored environmental protections, even as warnings from scientists have escalated.
Activism, too, has become mostly about tokenism, favoring incremental changes like recycling, reusable bags, hybrid cars, and efficient light bulbs. Since Earth Day 1970, global greenhouse gas emissions have increased by more than 240 percent. In a very real way, the severity of today’s climate crisis was locked in with full knowledge of how bad things were getting, despite all the good intentions of the environmental movement.
This moment needs to be different. We need to love each other so fiercely that a new way of being in the world can collectively emerge. It is a time of both destruction and creation. It’s not enough just to imagine a world without fossil fuels, we need to imagine a world where we care more deeply about each other.
Now, it’s time for those early promises of the environmental movement to become real. We are in a phase of moving from intentions to actions. It’s time for our love-filled rage to figure out what it’s capable of.
Coming up
Along with our conversation editor Nabeelah Shabbir, I’m super excited to host The Correspondent’s first transnational discussion with youth climate activists from around the world tomorrow, Friday 17 October. Please join us!
One more thing
Last week, I had the incredible honour of meeting Greta Thunberg and her father at my home in Minnesota. I wrote about the experience for The Correspondent, a piece that we decided to take down a few hours after publication after consultation with the family. It was the right decision, and out of respect for the sensitivity of their current situation, I am unable to say more on this, but I’m looking forward to continuing to bring light to the most important issue of our time as your climate correspondent.